On applicability of plate and shell heat exchangers for steam generation in naval PWR

•Given emissions restrictions, nuclear propulsion may be an alternative.•Plate and shell heat exchangers (PSHE) are a mature technology on market.•PSHE are compact and could be used as steam generators.•Preliminary calculations to obtain a PWR for a large container ship are performed.•Results suggest PSHE improve overall compactness and cost.

The pressure on reduction of gas emissions is going to raise the price of fossil fuels and an alternative to fossil fuels is nuclear energy. Naval reactors have some differences from stationary PWR because they have limitations on volume and weight, requiring compact solutions. On the other hand, a source of problems in naval reactors across history is the steam generation function. In order to reduce nuclear containment footprint, it is desirable to employ integral designs, which, however, poses complications and design constraints for recirculation type steam generators, being interesting to employ once through steam generators, whose historic at Babcock & Wilcox is better than recirculation steam generators. Plate and shell heat exchangers are a mature technology made available by many suppliers which allows heat exchange at high temperature and pressure. This work investigates the feasibility of the use of an array of welded plate heat exchangers of a material approved by ASME for pressure barrier (Ti-3Al-2.5V) in a hypothetical naval reactor. It was found it is feasible from thermal-hydraulic point of view and presents advantages over other steam generator designs.